Kids Ask Parents to Stop Sports Bullying

Dec. 10 -- In the small farming village of Beachburg, Ontario, in the Ottawa Valley, which they call Canada's hockey cradle, the Pee Wees arrive early for an annual event that brings everything else for square miles to a halt and focuses everyone's attention on center ice.

It's the annual Beachburg Pee Wee tournament, glorious to win but certainly not the Stanley Cup — although you would not know it from the atmosphere in the rink. This is no major-league arena where the stands are heated. It was built by villagers who take their hockey seriously.

You can see your breath here — unless you are holding your breath. And with the score tied at 0-0, everyone is holding their breath.

Everyone, that is, until a hockey father spots an incident on the ice that he is certain should have resulted in a penalty, which would give his son's team the advantage. "C'mon, ref! " he yelled.

The referee ignored the remark. If the kids heard it, they ignored it and just skated on — the same way many of them have learned to steel themselves against comments and screams coming from the stands, coming from parents who so often admonish them for their caliber of play.

And that's the problem. The kids have come out to play a game. Some of the parents have come out with dreams that their kids will someday make it in the National Hockey League and earn millions.

Walter Gretzky has stories about parents that he loves to share. Stories about moms who have told him under no uncertain terms that her child is going to be, well, the next Wayne Gretzky. Walter Gretzky, the father of the hockey legend, is horrified.

"It has to be fun," he said. "Because if it's not fun for them, they just won't want to play anymore. Whether it's a boy or a girl, they'll just pack it in."

Kids: ‘Enough Is Enough’

And that's becoming a real problem in hockey. Too much pressure from the parents is provoking many kids to say enough is enough.

Rick Everding is a hockey dad who is disgusted by the whole business. "Some kids, by the time they get to 15 or 16, they don't even want to go near the ice," he said.